The Yacoubian Building (film)
Encyclopedia
- This article is about the 2006 film; for other uses, see Yacoubian Building
- For the television series of the same name, see The Yacoubian Building (series)The Yacoubian Building (series)The Yacoubian Building is a 2007 Egyptian television series based on the scenario of Atef Beshai and directed by Ahmad Saqr. The series featured major roles by Salah Al-Saadni, Izzat Abou Of, Lobna Abdel Aziz, Rania Youssef and Aser Yasin....
The Yacoubian Building is an Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
based on the novel of the same title
The Yacoubian Building
The Yacoubian Building is a novel by Egyptian author Alaa-Al-Aswany. The book was made into a film of the same name in 2006 and into a TV series in 2007....
by author Alaa Al Aswany
Alaa Al Aswany
Alaa al-Aswany is an Egyptian writer, and a founding member of the political movement Kefaya.-Biography:Alaa Al Aswany studied to be a dentist, first in Egypt, and then later Chicago....
. It has been reported to be the highest-budgeted film in the history of Egyptian cinema
Cinema of Egypt
The cinema of Egypt refers to the flourishing Egyptian Arabic-language film industry based in Cairo, the capital of Egypt. Since 1976, Cairo has held the annual Cairo International Film Festival, which has been accredited by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations. There is also...
.
Background
Like the novel ostensibly set in 1990 at about the time of the first Gulf WarGulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
, the film is a scathing portrayal of modern Egyptian society since the coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
of 1952. The setting is downtown Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
, with the titular apartment building (which actually exists) serving as both a metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
for contemporary Egypt and a unifying location in which most of the primary characters either live or work and in which much of the action takes place.
The actual namesake Yacoubian building
Yacoubian Building (Cairo)
Yacoubian building is an edifice in Cairo, Egypt, built in 1937. It was the home of the crème de la crème of Egyptian society who lived in the building during the city's heydays of the 1930s and 1940s. Located on No...
, constructed in the Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
style, still stands in downtown Cairo at the address given in the novel: 34 Talaat Harb Street (referred to by its old name, Suleiman Basha Street, by both native Cairenes and the novel's characters). As in the novel, the film's version of the building is "in the high classical European style, the balconies decorated with Greek faces carved in stone..."
After premiering at the Berlin Film Festival in 2006, the film opened in Egypt in June.
The Yacoubian Building was Egypt's official submission to the 79th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.
Plot summary
The film opens with a montage tracing the building's history, as wealthy expatriate and Egyptian residents give way, after the 1952 coup that overthrew King Farouk and eventually resulted in the installation of Gamal Abdel NasserGamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...
as President of Egypt
President of Egypt
The President of the Arab Republic of Egypt is the head of state of Egypt.Under the Constitution of Egypt, the president is also the supreme commander of the armed forces and head of the executive branch of the Egyptian government....
, to new families, and as the rooftop storage rooms are converted into living space for lower-class families. The rooftop community, effectively a slum
Slum
A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...
neighborhood, is symbolic of the urbanization
Urbanization
Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....
of Egypt and of the burgeoning population growth in its large cities in recent decades, especially among the poor and working classes. In the faded apartments of the main floors and on the building's teeming roof, the films's principal characters are introduced:
- Zaki Pasha el Dessouki (Adel Imam) – a wealthy and elderly foreign-educated engineer who spends most of his time pursuing women and who maintains an office in the Yacoubian, he personifies the ruling class prior to the Revolution: cosmopolitan, cultured, western in outlook, and not particularly observant of Islam
- Taha el Shazli (Mohamed ImamMohamed ImamMohamed Imam is an Egyptian actor. He comes from an artistic family as his father is actor Adel Emam . His brother is director Rami Imam.-Biography:...
) – the son of the building doorman, he excelled in school and hoped to be admitted to the Police Academy but found that his father's profession, considered too lowly by the generals conducting his character interview, was an obstacle to admission; disaffected, he enrolls at the University and eventually joins a militant Islamist organization modeled upon the Jamaa IslamyaAl-Gama'a al-IslamiyyaAl-Gama'a al-Islamiyya is an Egyptian Islamist movement, and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, European Union and Egyptian governments... - Buthayna el Sayed (Hend SabriHend SabriHend Sabri is a Tunisian actress. She launched her acting career with a movie by the name of "Mawsim Al-rijal" or "The season of men" and "Samt al qosoor" and at the time she was less that 15 years old. Sabri's breakthrough was through "Mothakarat Morahiqa" or "A teenager's Diaries"...
) – initially Taha's childhood sweetheart, she is forced to find a job to help support her family after her father dies and is disillusioned to find that her male employer expects sexual favors from her and her female coworkers in exchange for additional money and gifts on the side, and that her mother expects her to preserve her virginity while not refusing her boss's sexual advances outright; embittered, she eventually comes to use her beauty as a tool to advance her own interests but finds herself falling in love with Zaki Bey el Dessouki, whom she'd been planning with Malak to swindle out of his apartment - Malak (Ahmed Bedeir) – a shirtmaker and petty schemer seeking to open a shop on the Yacoubian's roof and then to insinuate himself into one of the more posh apartments downstairs
- Hatim Rasheed (Khaled El Sawy) – the son of an Egyptian father who was a noted legal scholar and a French mother, he is the editor of Le Caire, a French language daily newspaper; more attention is paid to his private life, for he is a fairly open homosexual in a society which either looks the other way or openly condemns such behavior and inclinations
- Hagg Muhammad Azzam (Nour El Sherif) – one of Egypt's wealthiest men and a migrant to Cairo from the countryside, in the space of thirty years he has gone from shoeshinerShoeshinerShoeshiner or boot polisher is a profession in which a person polishes shoes with shoe polish. They are often known as shoeshine boys because the job is traditionally that of a male child. In the leather fetish communities, they are often called bootblacks...
to self-made millionaire; he seeks an acceptable and legal outlet for his (temporarily) resurgent libido in a secret, second marriage to an attractive young widow, and also realizes his goal of serving in the People's Assembly (Parliament), but comes face to face with the enormous corruption, graft, and bribery of contemporary Egyptian politics. - Christine (YoussraYoussraYousra is an Egyptian actress and singer. Her birth name is Civene Nassim. She is the sister-in-law of actor Hesham Selim, son of famous Egyptian football player, actor and former president of Al-Ahly, Saleh Selim. Youssra is considered as a glamorous icon for the Middle East. Despite obstacles,...
) – a world-weary chanteuse who advises Zaki Bey on his love life and whose poignant singing of European songs like "La Vie en RoseLa vie en rose"La Vie en Rose" was the signature song of French singer Édith Piaf.-Signature song of Édith Piaf:Édith Piaf first popularized La Vie en Rose in 1946. The lyrics were written by Piaf and the melody of the song by "Louiguy" . Initially, Piaf's peers and her songwriting team did not think the song...
" punctuates the film.
The stories of each of the primary characters are intertwined, at times colliding or converging with one another. Together, they give a biting condemnation of a nation that has squandered its promise and which has been forced to compromise its own principles, resulting in a corrupt and undemocratic political system dominated by a single party (the fictitious "Patriotic Party", a thinly-veiled version of Egypt's National Democratic Party
National Democratic Party (Egypt)
The National Democratic Party , often simply called Al-Ḥizb al-Waṭaniy – the "National Party", was an Egyptian political party. It was founded by President Anwar El Sadat in 1978....
). The unlikely pairing of the elderly roué and the disillusioned young girl that ends the film provides a closing grace note that can be seen as a ray of hope against the death and unhappiness that has befallen the other characters.
Cast
- Adel Imam .. Zaki Pasha
- Nour El Sherif .. Haj Azzam
- YoussraYoussraYousra is an Egyptian actress and singer. Her birth name is Civene Nassim. She is the sister-in-law of actor Hesham Selim, son of famous Egyptian football player, actor and former president of Al-Ahly, Saleh Selim. Youssra is considered as a glamorous icon for the Middle East. Despite obstacles,...
.. Christine - Hend Sabri .. Bosaina
- Somaya El Khashab
- Khaled El Sawy .. Hatem Rasheed
- Issad Younis .. Dawlat
- Ahmed Bedeir.. Malak
- Ahmed Rateb
- Khaled Saleh
- Bassem Samra
- Mohamed Imam .. Taha El-Shazli
- Youssef Daoud
Commercial and critical reception
Having received the Adults Only seal from the board of censors in Egypt, the film debuted on June 25 to box office returns of over LE 6,000,000 in its first week, according to Al Ahram daily, giving it the record for the biggest debut ever for a theatrical film in Egypt. It went on to gross LE 20 million during its initial theatrical run. The film is expected to bring in more profits when it is released on home video and to TV.Some of Egypt's lawmakers took to the floor of the People's Assembly to protest against the film for its depiction of a gay romance.